Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Re-Enters Atmosphere Over Indonesia After 22 Years

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Latest News

Recently, NASA reported that the Neil Gehrels Swift satellite Observatory tumbled out of orbit and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere over Indonesia.

About Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory

• It was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2004.
• It was aimed to explore the universe’s most powerful explosions, called gamma-ray bursts.
• It is part of NASA’s medium explorer (MIDEX) program and was launched into a low-Earth orbit on a Delta 7320 rocket.
• Objectives:
  • Determine the origin of gamma-ray bursts and how the burst evolves and interacts with the surroundings.
  • Classify gamma-ray bursts and search for new types.
  • Use gamma-ray bursts to study the early universe.
  • Perform the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky.
• It was comprised of three instruments namely
  • Burst Alert Telescope (BAT): It had large field-of-view and high sensitivity, the BAT detected about 100 GRBs per year, and computes burst positions onboard the satellite with arc-minute positional accuracy.
  • X-ray Telescope (XRT): It was able to obtain spectra of GRB afterglows during pointed follow-up observations. The images are used for higher accuracy position localizations, while light curves are used to study flaring and the long-term decay of the X-ray aferglow.
  • UV/Optical Telescope (UVOT): The UVOT takes images and can obtain spectra (via a grism filter) of GRB afterglows during pointed follow-up observations.
• Achievements: Since its launch, Swift has also studied hundreds of supernova explosions, star-shredding black holes, stellar X-ray flares, asteroids and comets, contributing to some 7,000 published scientific papers.

Source: DD News

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